Together we found out that if you stand atop a half-track tank and blew it with dynamite, the resulting explosion would propel you high enough into the air to give you just enough time to activate your parachute before you hit the ground with a heavy thud. We'd start up a private server, just the two of us, and experiment with the wonky physics engine for the noble purpose of fun. Most of the time, we didn't have such important concerns.ġ942 was the game that broke my habit of reloading after every bullet fired. However, playing these matches was only a part time interest. Thundering across the bay in a leaky boat and chasing down errant grey flags of contested control points became a regular after school activity.
Driving and shooting? Flying? And aircraft carriers? What madness was this? We began playing it every spare hour we had a chance, joining pitched battles already in progress, lending our combined skills to either side, a couple of kids eager to prove their worth. Neither of us had played anything like it. That is, until we installed the Wake Island Multiplayer demo for the first time, and anything else instantly became irrelevant. Hoovering up demo discs on the covers of gaming magazines, we'd play anything and everything.
I was a typical scruffy teenager with a silly haircut, and my best friend Rushi was the same, only his was even sillier. Though this would inevitably result in the feared American war cry: "You bastard! That's cheating! I thought we agreed no ships! Come on, I have to have my dinner soon!"īattlefield 1942 came out in 2002. In what has to be one of the least subtle battle tactics ever hatched, an optimistic player on the attacking Japanese side could try and drive this gigantic steel behemoth away from its anchored position, with the vain hope that the defending Americans wouldn't notice. The dangerous waters surrounding this lonely lump of sand included a submarine, battleship and, most spectacularly, a fully driveable aircraft carrier. A crescent shaped rock in the Pacific Ocean, it was home to a dusty airfield and no more than a dozen threadbare shacks housing some rusty tanks.